My experience was different. I arrived from Portugal as an exchange student in 1980, bringing with me the normal European prejudices. Jimmy Carter had been painted in Europe as a level-headed leader, a compassionate statesman. But all the promotion in the world couldn’t survive watching the man give speeches, or hearing of the infamous killer rabbit incident. And my European view could not survive coming in contact with American history books, which even then glorified FDR, the whole “the government saved us from the Depression” mythology.

I didn’t object to the portrayal of FDR. I simply was not economically literate enough.

However, I was savvy enough to know propaganda when I read it. I was disturbed by the palpable longing these texts revealed for an America in the 30s — an America that probably never existed. Even then it seemed to me what they promoted meant turning the clock back to a simpler — and dirtier, poorer, and more brutal — world. I could see we’d got from the ’30s to the ’80s through technological and social changes. This meant the changes weren’t the results of politics and couldn’t be undone by politics. The Democrats could pine for and promise the close-knit society of the ’30s, but they could not bring it back.Even if the ’30s were desirable (I prefer today), they couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Obama doesn’t seem to have ever realized this. He moved in more rarefied circles than the Ohio suburb where I finished high school. You could say he was exquisitely educated not to see the holes in the myths about FDR.

He never got to be a normal person, in a normal environment. His isolation, as the product of a biracial couple, and two broken families, might also have made it harder for him to distance himself from the one security he had — the security of his echo chamber that surrounded him like a an amber bubble encasing dinosaur DNA.

I’ve read somewhere that you simply can’t make large changes in life outlook after 45. I’m not sure that’s true. I could give several examples of people I know who have changed their entire outlook on life after that age.

It is, however, unlikely that someone as thoroughly indoctrinated as Obama was can change his outlook. The narrative he grew up in covers every detail of life and provides a facile explanation for everything. Our arugula shopper knows nothing of the average person’s life and, let’s face it, is unlikely to ever figure it out.

He’s been brought into the present after a fashion, the ’30s DNA spliced into the DNA of a Clinton Democrat, so that he’ll make half-hearted gestures, like proclaiming — in contradiction to his earlier pronouncements — that he’s following in the path of Ronald Reagan; or talking about being a centrist; or disguising tax increases as cuts in spending.

But the end result always breeds true to his dinosaurian world view: He’ll favor unions because somehow, over the years, they’ve become associated with the 1930s (even though FDR did not approve of civil service unions); he’ll sell out allies for a SALT treaty, because it was very important in the 70s; he’ll try to expand train service because he has the odd idea public transport fosters the type of close knit communities we had in the 1930s; he’ll obsess over green energy, because Carter did; he’ll do his best to bring back make-work paid for by the government because he imagines that’s what we want.

In fact, throughout all of it, he thinks he’s doing what everyone — not just the people who brought him up — longs for.

And throughout his flailing around in a world in which he doesn’t fit, examples of this displacement emerge in his speech: Sputnik, Cleveland, cars which use up eight miles a gallon.

If, like the restored velociraptor, he weren’t such a danger to the modern world, one would be tempted to feel sorry for our Jurassic President, wandering around in a landscape he can neither perceive nor understand because all his senses and training show him a world that no longer exists — and perhaps never did.

Sarah Hoyt lives in Colorado with her husband, two sons and too many cats. She has published Darkship Thieves and 16 other novels, and over 100 short stories. Writing non-fiction is a new, daunting endeavor. For more on Sarah and samples of her writing, look around at Sarah A. Hoyt.com or check out her writing and life blog at According to Hoyt.com.

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1.
Marc Malone

Sooo… he’s clinically insane: Completely out of touch with reality.

He’s locked into perpetual juvenile thinking: Arrested development.

He’s a Liberal Democrat.

You just described with this article every Democrat over 30 I have ever met.

Nice article, btw. Locked-in-time way of thinking. I like the analysis.

Psyching out Obama has been a recurring theme on this website. I have no objection to this as long as we consider the possibility that POTUS seems crazy or stuck in the New Deal because he has a voter base that is deeply conflicted among its elements. I wrote about this here, in bold face. See http://clarespark.com/2010/04/05/is-potus-crazy/. If we can’t analyze coalitions, we can’t beat them. Some Democrats are amenable to switching, given the threat of economic disaster, while others feed at the trough and will fight to the death to maintain their “benefits,” and are the fodder for demagogues.

For instance, neither villain nor fool covers his odd, time-displaced “Sputnik” moments: his obsession with unionized labor, or his fascination with trains, or his commitment to the SALT treaty, or his view of Cleveland as a cutting edge technological center, or his odd certainty that cars getting eight miles per gallon throng our highways.

Several of those things indicate his determination to collectivize — to herd — the citizenry. His entire record in power is consistent with an unbreakable commitment to socialist ideology. Many of his off-the-cuff statements provide further substantiation. So the question becomes: Can an American, presumedly mentally competent and avowedly committed to the Constitution of the United States, be a socialist and not a villain?

It takes willful blindness to review the Obamunist record and not see the evidence of The Won’s determination to destroy the Constitution. Probably the clearest indicators are his moves to undermine the separation of powers and its associated “checks and balances,” thus raising the executive branch to a position of de facto unlimited power. Just behind those come his seizures of major American corporations and his insistence on ever greater spending and exactions from the American people, using class-warfare rhetoric as his spearpoint.

But really, it shouldn’t be necessary to make this argument a second time. Garet Garrett made it many years ago, and all its postulates and logic are still applicable. The cast has changed, but the game remains the same.

Sarah, it is true that leftists are locked in a time warp. However, they are not trying to recreate the 30′s, they are trying to make permanent the 60′s.

Leftists have never had the energizing flow of adrenaline as they did in the heady days of the late sixties.

Carter is simply McGovern in a pastel cardigan, going through the foreign and domestic policies known as “appease and squeeze”. These far leftist time-freezers, will appease any leftist or anti-Western despot, whitewash their brutality and seek to find “root causes”…that somehow always point toward magnetic north…America.

In deranged leftist world, the “squeeze” is the more + more + more taxation on the “rich”. While external blame for all the world’s ills and evils invariably points at “the West” (primarily meaning America and Israel…although sub rosa…devout Christians and any business-minded Jew)…the internal “root problems” inside America are the fault of “the rich”.

You see, Sarah…in leftist world, all property is theft. They champion the plight of the Worker…but, only until he makes it. If his ship comes in, they try to sink it. In leftist world, it is the “struggle” that makes you worthy. But there is no escape from the struggle, once you are an insider. You have to hate anyone who escapes the struggle as a mortal enemy.

If, by chance…you DO make gobs of money…but, you want to live in leftist world, you have to spend your lifetime attacking “the rich”, pretending to care about the plight of the “oppressed” and read the Worker’s Daily as a photo op as often as possible.

Unions have long since passed the point of utility. They are destructive beasts, gorging on forced dues and sweetheart deals with leftist politicians. But they putatively and nominally pretend to represent “the struggle”…so, we get pensioned to death fiscally to keep this charade alive.

Obama isn’t so much a reincarnation of FDR…or, despite the obvious similarities…the execrable Carter. No, Sarah…Obama is an invention of the LSD-addled brain of Timothy Leary. He is leading the “tuned in, turned on, dropped out” brigade toward enlightenment…which always seems to come out spelled entitlement.

The perpetual struggle machine cranks out “victims” and “oppressors”, because that’s what made the late sixties so much fun. Pollution becomes “global warming”…because it was an energizing cause in the sixties. It needs to be kept alive to recharge the leftist batteries.

Every Republican is Tricky Dick Nixon.

Racism is “march worthy”…and must be spotted hiding under every utterance, around every corner, under every bed…of non-leftists.

The VietNam war…is ALL conflicts, great and small.

You see, Sarah…in leftist world…EVERYTHING is described, defined, promoted and SOLVED…by placing it in a sixties context. EVERYTHING.

Obama, a bi-racial, affirmative action, community organizing, son of a Socialist Muslim Kenyan father and hippie anti-establishment mother….who got a suspicious entree’ into Columbia after two radical and undistinguished years at Occidental, a murky admittance into Harvard, a mysterious and murky Cooper Union/Bill Ayers/New Party political past…if he didn’t exist, he would have been invented by leftist baby boomers in an acid flashback.

They called upon their lackeys in the lapdog media to cover the fact that he has done nothing, accomplished nothing, built nothing, created nothing, ….he arose from the vapors, a hero…because he was the shell they wanted…not the substance. And, we are now being led by that empty shell, into the sixties redux and acid-soaked tremors of all that leftist adrenaline rush treasure hunt. Trying to recapture the glory of an era when being a liberal stood for something…other than outright fraud and deceit.

Find or invent a problem. Scream to the masses that this is not right or fair. Curse those who oppose you portraying them as heartless baby killers and earth destroyers and more. Fix the problem by making it worse by throwing money at it. Ultimately destroy it (Black American Family; Education; soon Healthcare; etc.). When it is destroyed, tell everyone to your and their self righteous satisfaction it is SOLVED. Move on to next real or imagined problem. Repeat until you have created the new Botswana.

“Obama, a bi-racial, affirmative action, community organizing, son of a Socialist Muslim Kenyan father and hippie anti-establishment mother….”
Little know fact, was not supported by the Al’s and Jesse”s and ilk.
Because in the words of that ilk “he don’t have no slave blood” Sinbad
stand up comic. Guess they figured this is what we get so take it.
The other statement I like is “clean, articulate, light”. You cannot revisit the past election without a Time Machine, so step up to the plate and take care of the next election. Everyone in House and Senate involved with electing this man to office should not be sent back to Washington. Vetting. Comes in all forms and starts with you producing a birth certificate when you get a driver’s license at 16 years old.

They took over academia, media and so many civil society institutions. The 1969 protest image of kids soaking up their privileged underpinnings with jingoistic, self-righteous, shallow world views fits my image of a large portion of our country’s leadership. (It is hardly leadership, and more like cultural standard bearers in positions of leadership.)

This immature element of our civil society glorifies and institutionalize what, in a normal world-view, would be considered as extreme indiscretions and criminal behavior. These asshats never grew up, have entered power and screwed up so much. They are a bunch of fundamentalist nihilists with post-modernist theories and tax and punish statist political philosophies.

There are so many authority figures like this. As individuals, they are usually a pitiful parody of what they claim to be against: status conscious controlling busy-bodies, evil puppet masters of the world, etc. Taken together, they are a national disaster. This mindset now owns our Manchurian-like President’s mythical worldview.

Hope and pray that this craziness is at its peak. And fight back! Live life well with high standards of personal behavior and expectations of others. Be independent and well informed. Beyond personal and professional life, be civicly engaged and involved! Do what you can (which is a lot) to stop destructive policy and nonsense politics. Get out of your chair – don’t just read. A lot is at stake. If the President were just mildly successful, it would be like we lost a war.

I’ve said this before: Democrats create elaborate myths about themselves and their predecessors. Grand, sweeping, weeping, lovey, melty, drippy, wonderful myths, where people live in harmony with the elves and unicorns, and all sustenance is provided from a virtual cornucopia of goodness. All because of the expert benevolence of the Democrat Party.

Obama is the tip of the pyramid of this skewed manner of thinking.

For example, I am the kid brother of several of the more *ahem* radicalized 1960s protest types. Let me assure you that if I want a rocking good time, I will go to an older brother, and begin to challenge his myth of his generation and their antics during their youth.

He practically screams at me, “YOU don’t KNOW! YOU weren’t THERE” (I speak from experience here – we actually DID have this very conversation).

Well, yeah, I was a kid, but yes I was there. And my memory is just fine, thanks. My memory of the late 1960s is utterly at odds with his. It was not idyllic; they were not noble crusaders; they affected not much change; most of their actions were all about self-gratification, a disdain for authority and rules, all coupled to an utter pathological fear that they might be required to place their precious ass on the line in Viet Nam,

And as to that last, speaking of myths. I recollect reading a statistic that showed that when the draft officially ended, the formal (and semi-formal) protest organizations lost well over 90% of their members, very fast. So in the end, it had nothing to do about the myth of ending an unjust war, or helping the poor brown people of SE Asia – the record shows it was all about avoiding service in the military. And the moment the heat was off, they departed in haste.

Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble. The point being, Democrats have nothing but myths that fail against reality, but like most delusional thinkers, you can’t get them to abandon their beliefs. Even if reality itself contradicts them.

Allston, for what it is worth I am exactly the same age as your older brothers and was also one of those long haired morons happy to be in the streets demonstrating for the “Strike” rather then studying for exams in that spring of 1970. We were as you said much more focused on not getting sent to Viet Nam then we were saving the world. It was our own butts we were worried about, but of course we never would have admitted that, even to ourselves. It was no accident that the major national strikes that shut the colleges down came just exactly as the availability of college defferments went away. I was a member of the last college enterring class, 1969-1970 to be given a four year defferment. Everyone that came after my cohort had to go directly into the draft as soon as they graduated from high school. That made the timing much less arbitrary and much more personal. It was the young Teddy Kennedy that did away with the college defferments and while they were obviously unfair to kids not able to hide in college, you can bet that he and his fellow travelers were well aware that doing away with the draft would quickly boil the nation into national turmoil.

Read David Horowitz’s excellent book, “Destructive Generation,” to learn how infantile the radicals were in the 60s. They even had contentious debates about whether going into the bathroom alone and closing the door to have privacy was an aristocratic behavior that needed to be snuffed out. I started college in the fall of 1965 and the years from then until 1970 were the worst years of my life. The campuses were crawling with unwashed, lazy radicals who were hell-bent on destruction. As Horowitz says, “Liberals are destroyers. Conservatives are creators.” And now, we have those 1960s radicals in power at every level of government. God help America.

I heartily second JK in recommending “Destructive Generation”, and even more so Horowitz’ autobiography “Radical Son”. It makes my blood boil when I consider the way in which the leftist radicals have succeeded in establishing their intellectually bankrupt narrative as the true history of the sixties. Horowitz was on the other side then, and his portrayals of people like Ayers, Dohrn and the rest of the deadly clown circus are very valuable indeed in evaluating our current crop of “progressives”.

We are an ocean apart, but I could not agree more with your analysis. Speaking as a conscript in the final days of the Vietnam War, a conscript with Left attitudes, still humming McArthur Park to myself; I know what a bunch of self-serving mediocre wannabes my peer group was. The Left was contemptible from beginning to end, from their shitty academic lifestyles, to their shitty fraudulent “academic (post-modernist) work”, to their twisted “sexual revolution” and oh so hip and with-it dope smoking man, wow, all ya need is lerve man! Only difference for me being that then I swallowed the lot with enthusiasm, and now I can barely be in the same room as these people without feeling nauseous. It’s hard historically to imagine a more worthless generation!

Well written guys. Having lived through that period while in the service of this country, what you collectively say is true. If the WWII generation became known as the “greatest generation” then the 60′s generation should become known as the “worst generation.”
I came back to the US in 1970 after two years in SEA and got stationed in California. I got to know many of these people intimately and disgusting just does not have enough power to describe the vast majority of them.

Well, for me it was best summed up by a kid in his twenties in ’92. “The Baby Boomers grew up to make everything they did illegal for their kids to do.” But I also think it is important to see past the temper tantrum of some to the far more who were drafted or volunteered to do their duty. Sure they got the hippy chicks, the music and the marketing machine but more of the generation spent the summer of ’69 in mud with a Southeast Asian flavor than wallowed at Woodstock.

So when we condemn them, let’s remember those deserving condemnation are a small subset comprised of misbehaving children and not the whole cohort. And if you look it up, the children were being lead around by those born in the mid-thirties, usually from socialist families. The Seventies are more properly the period driven by the Boomers, and by the way, thanks for a depressing decade to grow up in, bad hair, bad clothes, bad hygiene, bad politics, bad economy and really, really bad music.

Full disclosure, depending on what year is used as the Baby Boom cut off, I am part of the generation but I have nothing in common with the whiners nor did a benefit from following in their wake.

I have a theory about that. My memory is that everything changes between the class of 1972 and the class of 1974. I attribute the change to the end of the war, and the severe recession of 1973-74 (which, to my memory and perception, was a lot worse than the current one). The 1972 grads went off screaming “Power to the People Right On!” The 1974 grads went off thinking “I’ve got to find a job.” After 1974, the grads always seemed much more grown up than their older siblings, but because they are behind the bulge, they had a lot harder time actually finding a job.

Maybe that difficulty is the reason the maturity split still seems to exist.

As you know, this subset of the baby boom generation you describe (hopefully a minority) took over academia, media and so many civil society institutions. The 1969 protest image of kids soaking up their privileged underpinnings with jingoistic, self-righteous, shallow world views fits my image of a large portion of our country’s leadership. (It is hardly leadership, and more like cultural standard bearers in positions of leadership.)

This immature element of our civil society glorifies and institutionalize what, in a normal world-view, would be considered as extreme indiscretions and criminal behavior. These asshats never grew up, have entered power and screwed up so much. They are a bunch of fundamentalist nihilists with post-modernist theories and tax and punish statist political philosophies.

There are so many authority figures like this. As individuals, they are usually a pitiful parody of what they claim to be against: status conscious controlling busy-bodies, evil puppet masters of the world, etc. Taken together, they are a national disaster. This mindset now owns our Manchurian-like President’s mythical worldview.

Hope and pray that this craziness is at its peak. And fight back! Live life well with high standards of personal behavior and expectations of others. Be independent and well informed. Beyond personal and professional life, be civicly engaged and involved! Do what you can (which is a lot) to stop destructive policy and nonsense politics. Get out of your chair – don’t just read. A lot is at stake. If the President were just mildly successful, it would be like we lost a war.

I took the liberty of pasting some of your thoughts on my wall as a Thought and prayer for this Good Friday as follows:

“Live life well with high standards of personal behavior and expectations of others. Be independent and well informed. Beyond personal and professional life, be civicly engaged and involved! Do what you can to stop nonsense politics, and destructive actions. Get out of your chair – don’t just read. A lot is at stake. ”

Should you object to this, please let me know, and I will take it down immediately. Thank you.

Amen Allston. I merely lurk most of the time, but you’ve teed this one up perfectly. Thanks Allston for being one of the few commentators that cuts through the fog of bs usually holding out as idealistic vainglory. Yes the average slimeball draftdodging wus pretended to be self righteously indignant about babykillers yada, yada, yada. Canada gave them a megaphone etc. Having been there as a volunteer no less, my scorn even today is like bile. Unfortunately many of these yellow bastards are today holding positions of prestige and power in government.

It’s all about ideas. These people have been allowed to promulgate a false history of our national affairs, always to their party benefit. This is where the Republican party had lost it’s way – allowing these self-serving liars to promote their way of life, unopposed, as if it’s the only proper way for you to conduct your affairs ethically. That is, by their standards, which, as far as they are concerned, are the only standards; truth doesn’t enter into it.

“And throughout his flailing around in a world in which he doesn’t fit, examples of this displacement emerge in his speech: Sputnik, Cleveland, cars which use up eight miles a gallon.”

I’ve felt tha Obama was a dedicated socialist from the first day he entered office. The gigantic “stimulus” bill, which stimulated NOTHING except some union jobs, only confirmed my worst fears. This guy was going to bankrupt the country to try and make it just like the social-welfare states that existed in Europe. Obamacare was the final nail in the coffin. He was going all the way and, if Obamacare is fully implemented, you WILL have a single payer form of health care, just like in the UK, which has been proved to be a crushing failure.

Obama also has never met a government program he didn’t like. The last budget battle only proves that. Remember, at the start of negotiations, the Democrats didn’t think ANYTHING needed to be cut from the budget. it was just fine. Remember that? It was only after the threat of a government shutdown that the Democrats gave in to a paultry $40 billion in cuts, peanuts in an over $3 TRILLION budget.

And now Obama is talking about raising the money on the “evil” rich people once again, like a good socialist. Remember, in Obama’s socialist Utopia, everybody has to be poor so that everybody has to depend on the big, bloated, federal government for everything, from food and housing, to health insurance.

The man has to go in 2012. Anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, would be better than an out-of-control socialist who wants to not only tear up the Constitution, but drive this country off a financial cliff. Shame on the Americans who voted for this radical community organizer (i.e., union lover). Nope, we have only one more chance at it, gang, and we had better get it right in 2012.

Rediculous. Of course he’s met a government program he didn’t like. Remember the F-22? So do I, fondly.

And the spending was about bankrupting the country, not union jobs. If Obama had put the Border Fence on an expedited schedule, complete with PLAs, he could be cruising to re-election right now, and probably with the “comprehensive immigration reform” that would cement his 2008 majority for a generation to come.

As it is now, he over-reached and now we have a window of opportunity to send him back to his Hyde Park bubble.

One little tid bit of insight. Remember Jimmy Carter was complete unknown and found by the Council of Foreign Relations group as our new savior after the Nixon/Ford years as the way to “transform America”. The odd idealistic and presented as so brilliant he had a degree in nuclear engineering from his time in the Navy, peanut farmer seemed to be the answer to all of the Democratic ideals. He was a nuclear engineer, a businessman, a liberal southener who was a friend of the Black community, and an ex governor. The same people who “found” Obama and groomed him as the “answer” to the leadership problems of America, found Jimmy Carter and presented them both a uniting centerists. They both turned out to be incompetent front men for old and Statist oriented ideas. Let’s remember where these threats to the countries Constitution come from. Our “friends” from the Council of Foreign Relations are all around us and still pushing to forward that “New World Order” that they keep talking about. They are as much George H. Bush, the older, as they are Senator Rockerfeller. Let’s start paying attention to who the real enemy is before it is too late for our own freedoms.

The person Ms Hoyt describes is what the philosopher Eric Hoffer limned as “the true believer”. A misfit, and emotionally needy, the true believer is easily manipulated. He is ripe for a cause, a movement. There, he is taught to glorify the past, loath the present and become dedicated to creating a utopian future.
The product of a broken home, of mixed race, abandoned by both his parents, Obama has found what he believes gives him the self-worth he seeks.
Well, peachy. Follow your bliss and all that. But, as the Wiki entry for Hoffer’s The True Believer reveals, “The book also explores the behavior of mass movements once they become established (or leave the “active phase”). With their collapse of a communal framework people can no longer defeat the feelings of insecurity and uncertainty by belonging to a compact whole. If the isolated individual lacks vast opportunities for personal advancement, development of talents, and action (such as those found on a frontier), he will seek substitutes. These substitutes would be pride instead of self-confidence, memberships in a collective whole like a mass movement, absolute certainty instead of understanding.”
When Obama found himself propelled into the White House by his handlers, the “compact whole” went away. Probably to Libya.
Like the demagogue Carter, Obama now flounders, casting about for someone to restore him. Unlike Carter, he has no personal experience to provide it for himself. Rahm Emanuel is no longer Head Coach. Obama, and his administration, will become increasingly unstable as his term unwinds.

This is the most cogent and, I would argue, accurate analysis of Obama I’ve seen yet. Thanks, Sarah, for gathering the impressions and feelings surrounding this President into a comprehensive study of the philosophy driving his agenda. While I can’t claim to move in rarefied intellectual circles, I’ve had enough recent contact with “higher” education to come away with a similar opinion of the mindset Obama displays. As a 50-something male displaced from my job by the economic upheaval in the last three years, I found it necessary to finally complete my Bachelor’s degree after more than 25 years as a manager in manufacturing. Experience wasn’t enough for the employer where I’m working on a contract basis. Without a credential they won’t consider hiring me full-time. So, flinging my book bag over my shoulder, back to university I went. Talk about a time-warp. Completing the last two English Lit courses needed for my BA, all I had to do in order to bang off straight A’s was to cast my mind back to the Carter era. While I’m Canadian and attended a Canadian institution, subtly injecting rosy, nostalgic pseudo-Marxist references into my assignments resulted in ecstatic comments from my professors about how “enlightened” I am. That such references were at complete odds from my real-world, hard-nosed manufacturing experience dealing with union thugs made the experience even more surreal. It was truly enjoyable, though, to feed such twaddle to unsuspecting “intellectuals” and have them lap it up as gospel. What makes Obama a menace is that he shares the same mind-set. He doesn’t have two faces… what you see is what you get. Hazy nostalgia for days that never were. What a way to run a country (into the ground). 2012 can’t come soon enough.

I just read this Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years regarding the complete insanity of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. In all the sessions related, not one actually involved composition but many I guess were on communicating the party line. This is what college English department professors are today. No wonder little Johnny can’t write.

The communists/Marxists took over the college and university liberal arts areas the same way they took over everything else. They infiltrated and then organized and then chose which of their members to promote to first the committee posts, then the chairman posts and then the council of the leadership and then the chairmanship and then all the posts essential for control. They did this in all the “academic” associations they could weasel their way into and with these positions they then could divy up the tenure positions to their fellow travelers and eventually they could even determine who got hired and who didn’t. This is from an english major who while I was never in academia other than as a student, I watched all the card carrying members of little real ability leverage themselves and their friends into Presidents of all the major liberal arts professional organizations. And this was in the 60s. No wonder they are under every rock today, they have been scheming to get themselves promoted into every knook and crany for decades.

An interesting analogy. He governs like the country was Chicago and he was Mayor Daley (the deceased one) but I guess that’s consistent with your thesis. I’m really surprised that all of these other folks you allude to are also that stupid. It sounds as if we are going to need a huge wake up call to rouse the brain dead and, thanks to the fecklessness of their Obamination, we are on the road to getting it.

I too am anti-Obama, and with what I can understand of your article I think I may at least partly agree.

But your metaphors are too mixed to make any sense. Echo-chambers don’t have amber and cannot be seen even through gauze. Then it turns out your echo-chamber is Jurassic Park. Please try making your point without metaphors – it may be clearer.

I’m sorry, but… an article titled “Jurassic President” and you didn’t see that there’d be an extended metaphor relating to Jurassic Park? It’s a pretty common literary device, and Sarah is an author. Authors thrive on mixed metaphors. Shakespeare committed more than a few of them, too.

Of course, as an avid fiction reader and a compulsive reader of just about anything else I can get my hands on, I’m familiar with both, and I didn’t have any problems understanding Sarah’s article. Neither did any of the other commenters that I can see.

Maybe it’s just not enough caffeine? I know what I’m like before I’m properly awake, and reading something that’s drawing an extended analogy with metaphorical devices before I’m awake isn’t something that works.

Well, see one here. I didn’t get it either. It was a forced metaphor and not followed up on.

If the joke is, “What’s the difference between President Obama and ‘Jurassic Park’”, the answer would appear to be, “Everything”.

I can’t say, “How many Martians does it take to put a rotational spin on an asteroid?” and then say, “There’s no such thing as Martians.” as the punch line.

By the way, Obama IS like FDR: he took a situation where criminals on Wall St. wrecked the economy before he became President and made it worse. The difference is that WW III hasn’t yet come along to bail out Obama’s legacy as did WW II for FDR although it’s not from lack of disinterest. The problem is that Obama wouldn’t know whether to ally himself with Hitler until the press or one of his advisers told him.

I can see a White House transcript now: “There’s Jews in Europe? Look, I thought they all lived in Uruguay like in that movie…. Ohhhh, what’s the name now – I forget – it’s right on the tip of my tongue…”

What do you call an ambitious Affirmative Action upgunned vagabond in a suit and tie who relates to “American Graffiti” like I do “Jules and Jim”?

I enjoyed the article. It depressed me! Why are all the smart people wasting their time pointing out the problems. We can all see them (maybe not describe them so well) but we don’t have people writing the solutions. I guess they’re scared to step out. If Sarbans-Oxley is good for business it is good for government. If W-2′s and 1099′s are good for income earners then 1099-GOV is good for recipients of ‘income, redistributed’. If the First Amendment is good for us, it must be good for “them” before we spill our blood and treasure. If fairness is the goal, then fairness in applying the law will work…every time it is tried.

When ever I read articles regarding O’s formative years, the petri dish he percolated in, I am reminded of this post from November 2008 from one of my blog heroes Mencius Moldbug (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/president-obama-with-little-perspective.html).
I am a long-time SF reader, but have not read Sarah Hoyt. After reading this, she’ll have another new fan.
I have great respect for non-native English speakers becoming successful authors…like Joseph Conrad, one of our greatest.

Good article but actually too kind. He is a Trojan Horse. He hasn’t had a single thought in his life that wasn’t programmed by his Marxist mother and grandfather who if they appeared in public would appeal to 1/2 % of the sickest left leaning part of the population. He is fodder for his handlers and is far more of a symptom than a change agent in and of himself. The first candidate and campaign that reads up on Obama’s mother and grandfather and uses it to advantage wins. Sadly, that has an element of risk so we are stuck with the ObamaMama for 4 more years.

He doesn’t have a thought.
He functions through tugs on the strings or whisperings in his ears; Samantha into his left ear, Cass into the right!
As Sarah wrote, he heard this and heard that, and that and that, but didn’t have a thought in his head to question anything he heard.
Hang, even a young child on being given an explanation to a question will come back with another question to the previous answer.

What is particularly freightening is Obama could be re-elected. Of course we only have ‘themselves’ to blame if he is. He is equally as incompetent as Carter, but he has better handlers who are willing to use any means necessary to implement their agenda. ANY MEANS. O is probably smarter than Carter and certainly much much more ruthless (he hasn’t a shred of honor and wouldn’t know it if it grabbed his a$$) and we live in a very different time, with wealth that Carter could only dream about taxing and redistributing.

Their seems to be a preconceived idea among the left that if they can legislate or just install their agenda by any means necessary, that they ‘Obama and friends’ will win the day and have endless rule of the land to show we mortals the proper way to live our lives.

I’m not convinced. We still don’t roll over to have our belly rubbed like most Canadians (I’ve lived there) and all EUtopians (spent a lot of time there). Albeit there is a growing minority of all races who are starting to enjoy it too much.

I believe that if Obama and friends get there way there are many of us who will not just roll over. No mean spiritedness or violence being preached here, but by ballot we have to reduce their influence in Washington. I am not going to willingly become their lap dog.

We’d better get on board and pray one of these GOP candidates can rise out of the mist and take this guy down.

“I’ve read discussions about President Obama for the last two years — is he a villain or a fool? Both or neither”
He is a “TOOL”, put all the pieces of the puzzle together and you will see this is true. It is hard to believe he had been groomed since birth to become Leader of the Free World, the whole World and some kind of messiah.
The man has been bought and sold to promote an idealogy. Thought slavery
went out with the Civil War. The question here is who was the buyer. Think I know who the seller was.

Sarah: Fantastic article, probably 100% correct, but doesn’t really matter HOW close it is. A follow-up article could state a few simple facts about what his mentors/peers/heroes believe, believed, and preached. There is a common-thread among the mentors:
Frank Marshall Davis (Frank in his books) the father-figure in Hawaii in his years just before college, Franz Fanon (?) the political firebrand who wrote books that Obama loved reading and discussing with his friends and marxist profs at Occidental (again, described in DFMF); his father, quite a socialist; Reverand Wright, thought America and Capitalism exploited minorities; and finally how about Bill Ayers, who’s really been preaching how evil, unfair, and exploitive Capitalism is, and getting paid very well to do it to Univ of Illinois undergraduates for decades.
Nice simple thread of ‘thought’ among these deviants. Not written about, the MSM has not jumped on it, but could have in ’08 to save us from him.

Coming of age in the 60s, I faced the same fate as other men my age, finishing school, draft into the army, and off to Vietnam. Each step was hateful, basic training, Viet Nam…but I adjusted. Communal life got to be great fun. Time spent with friends, drinking, grass, lovely women any time…Viet Nam had its good side too. When the time came for it to all end, the temptation was overwhelming to keep it all going. Going home to no home, no job, no work experience, responsibilites, being the only one to fend for myself, no friends…the end of carefree life as a juvenile. Growing up. It was the hardest decision I’ve made before or since. I’m glad I made it. Those unwilling to grow up and put childhood behind them moved into academics and kept the party going. Sadly, they now govern our country.

Dear Ms. Hoyt:
I enjoyed reading this column immensely. I seem to recall you also commented a few months ago on a previous PJM column, Is Science Fiction Getting More Conservative? I thought at the time I wanted to read some of your fiction, but never acted on it. I followed the links at the bottom of today’s column, but–other than that I enjoyed the first five or six pieces on your blog–really didn’t get any guidance on what to read first. I grew up loving Heinlein, Pournelle & Niven, and now enjoy most of L. M. Bujold’s work and some of Ringo’s. Can you recommend a “first enounter with your work” for me?
Ron Pittenger

“I know that artists, academics, and self-described intellectuals have self-selected themselves into an almost parallel universe of leftist chic and wishful thinking”
It is called “Magical Thinking” which went around a couple of years ago.

Lee Harris looked at this as a wider topic which included terrorism in Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology and it has not only a review of religious fantasy ideology but how he came up with the idea due to the anti-war movement. The anlaysis is, at heart, a way to identify a fantasy ideology system, by its lack of connection to the actual, physical world, events and causation of events. It is a disjunction between the understanding of what is a ’cause’ and what is an ‘effect’, and when played out on the world stage the consequences of fostering a non-direct cause to effect logic is horrifying.

Here is a key graph from the piece:

For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology — by which I mean, political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like “Dungeons and Dragons” carried out not with the trappings of medieval romances — old castles and maidens in distress — but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The difference between them is that one is an innocent pastime while the other has proven to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.

The postulation that 9-11 was a work of symbolic action that was to bring forth fantastical results is one that works in accord with other works by Al Qaeda, particularly The Management of Savagery which descibes a highly disjointed world view on the economic side that is only rivaled by the Left.

Sputnik, Cleveland, 8 mpg mileage, trains… all of those are not objects in amber but objects in symbols and emblems: they represent a fantastical world view that is not connected to this world at any point in time. In thinking that these can serve as lynch pins for continuance of social objectives if they can but be enacted, is an act of fantasy with faith behind it. Someone inside that faith, that believes in the symbolism and emblems and follows a set practice in which to get them is not involved in a cause and effect world, but one with the belief that the symbols have a power unto themselves.

In history that has not gotten peace, good will, and understanding amongst mankind, but endless wars between religions and belief systems that are embedded in cultures through tyrannical means. The true believers are just that: they see themselves as the keepers of the true faith. It doesn’t matter if it is Islam, Marxism in all its varieties, the AUM Shinrikyo death cult, or the followers of Jim Jones, each requires authoritarian means to get power over people to force them to say that they actually ‘believe’ what the true believers keep as the absolute truth. Argue with a true believer and you get screams, not reason, as belief is beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond cause and effect.

When the belief that the symbol is the thing itself comes into play, then the attack of 9-11 was an attempt to enact the absolute destruction of America in one blow. That getting more ‘regulations’ will ‘fix’ the system, without ever once questioning if the system is ‘broken’ or if it is the system can even be ‘regulated’ without destroying the good things it does. Symbolically there is no difference between those two items which is why Al Qaeda seeks for further ways to get its fantastical results (with ever more lethal weapons) and the Left seeks to regulate everything in life with the belief that life can be perfected by government. One is directly lethal to people immediately, the other corrodes society and civilization in the long-term, especially when it does not confront the former believing that such savagery can be ‘regulated’ away. These are the grand disjunctions in the modern world, and they will come to no good end and cause much misery for mankind. True believers do not believe in cause and effect having a direct relationship…and yet the physical world and even that which we create as society for our social world, does.

So Obama wants to take us back to the good old days, of Jimmy Carter. I sure hope not. His policies definitely seem similar. Actually they are worse, as confirmed if you listen to former Carter advisor Pat Caddell.
Pretty interesting that the 2 decades Obama pines for, the 30’3 and the 70′s, were the worste 2 economic decades in american history, whole also being the 2 decades that saw the greatest expansion of gov, at the expense of the private economy.

I am old enough to remember the Carter years, and the sky high unemployment, huge inflation, huge interest rates, gas lines, and general chaos. Anybody who actually LIKES what went on in those 2 decades definitely does not have americas economic interests at heart.

The White House is full of commies and friends of commies.
The elitists are doing anything they can to help the enemies of the Jewish People. (Well maybe in the Thirties it was only Joseph Kennedy, now it’s a whole party.)
The economic policies pushed by the Democrats are destroying the economy.
Abroad, the most powerful weapons are in the hands of a regime of psychotics that is moving to conquer the world.
Those who say that a storm is coming and that we need to get ready are considered madmen.
Russia is in the hands of a bloody dictator who kills his enemies.

The reason the 30′s are magnetic true north for the radical Left is that only in conditions of extreme misery is there a chance that the general population will give up liberty WILLINGLY in exchange for the promised alleviation of that misery.

I couldn’t sleep last night so to tried to put myself to sleep with boredom I clicked on PJM and this article in particular. My ploy worked and I soon found myself so bored that sleep was a welcome relief. For a moment I was tempted to comment on this article but I couldn’t get myself to do it. It too would have been a waste of time. Its not that the article wasn’t well written, it was. It also contained many links which shows that a lot of thought went into it. My problem with this article and the next one seemed that it was a rehash of old news and it played on the people who read this again and again. So I started thinking, what could be more interesting to write about.
I came up with some suggestions which I offer this author and any other author on PJM.
A story about the boy who was wounded on the school bus in Israel, how he languished for ten days, how he died, and the pain his parents must be going through.
A story about Obama’s sixth trip to LA to raise money for his campaign. How it costs the taxpayers about as much as he made during this trip.
Why so many of the people paying to dine with Obama are Jewish and still don’t understand what Obama really is about.
Why isn’t Obama going to the rescue of the Syrian people like he did the Libyan people. Today some fifty died.
What is America’s true involvement in the Libyan war.
Ugly reverse racism in this country. Why an angry black man, especially now.
Should California be given back to Mexico.
Why are there black Moslems, especially when the slavers in Africa were Moslem.
Is Saudi Arabia out to destroy the American Dollar, if not Saudi Arabia, China, the EU, or Obama.
Why has Obama halted oil drilling in the US but he subsidizes his friend’s Soros company in Brazil.
Why is portraying Obama as a monkey offensive, while having portrayed Bush that way was not.
Can the Republicans get their act together and come up with a viable candidate for president or should the Tea Party become a separate party and come up with their own candidate.
Does Obama still love the sound of the call to prayer in the morning.

Pat I was tempted to answer you which in consideration would be a waste of time. I told my wife of my dilemma and she suggested that I dust a little bit. Hmmm, I think that I’ll do just that. Its got to be less boring than to answer you. Yawn…………….

Patrick, I clicked on your hyper link just to check you out. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that you write well and some of your stories are interesting. Let me be the first to ever comment on your site. However, I find you personally, not your writing, boring. I think I’ll go take a nap.

*chuckle* Pleasantly surprised to find I write well? Well given that I write for a living I should hope I write well. Please feel free to comment, though I must tell you you are not the first by any stretch.

Brilliant work! Unfortunately, you overlook LBJ. If Conservatives were faced with FDR and Carter only, their task would be easy. But LBJ’s programs offended man and God. Yes, Obama believes in FDR and Carter but he also hides in them. If he showed his credentials as a follower of LBJ, he would be pilloried. Republicans cannot attack LBJ because they fear the charge of racism. I guess Republicans are still waiting for the tsunami of African-Americans switching parties.

I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that you stutter. I take back any nasty comment I made, would have made, or could ever dream of. Please forgive me. I refuse to pick on the handicapped. I’ll go back to kicking my dog.

Okay, let’s do a Robin Hood President instead. That works for me. There’s no amber and it took place before their were dinosaurs but there’s entitlement driven poor people who rob rich people and seek to overthrow the legitimate government by subversion and demonization.

Well done. This President offends on almost every level. What bothers me the most is the absolute lack of respect Barack Obama has for anything or anyone — except for basketball players and Hollywood glitterati, of course. But even that is not respect. Possibly if you have never worked for, fought for or built anything yourself then you are incapable of respecting those who have or a country that was founded on the backs and shoulders of people who have.

If we had listened to my old schoolmate, George Carlin, it would have been over years ago. The planet is billions of years old and nothing humans have done or can do to it will ever change anything. After surviving billions of years, Earth doesn’t give a damn what we do. It adapts.

As Carlin says, “Twenty-five species that were here today will be gone tomorrow. . . There’s nothing wrong with the planet. The people are f*cked!. . . And we have the conceit that we’re a threat . . . some plastic bags and aluminum cans are gonna make a difference? . . . The planet isn’t going anywhere! . . . Ask those people at Pompeii how the planet is doing? . . . It’s a self-correcting system . . . ”
(See the Carlin 7 minute video and read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4208)

I think you’re mistaken, and much too generous in your assessment of Obama as merely a throwback. I think he is both villain and fool. Why else is he the standard bearer of the statist totalitarians intent on destroying the USA as Constitutional Republic. Who give themselves names to disguise their true identity: “democrats”, “liberals”. Using names that describe entirely different world views, succcessfully gulling people to their true intent. What can be the aims of people who appear to others in disguise or with obscure histories to advance their”dreams”?

The first,AFTER Executive nationalising of some banks and large parts of the economy, egregiously oppressive action as Obamacare. Beginning life during the Advent to the Milleniumm in the 1990s as Hillarycare was rejected by an earlier Congress. Forced through using gangster tactics of “democratic” enclaves. by the praetorians N. Pelosi and H. Reid with their troops.

As arrogant shot across the bow to CHANGE America from a Constitutional Republic with a Bill of Rights protecting citizens from central overarching government. With unaccountable bureaucrats to carry out their dictates. Thus abrogating, i.e. taking without lawful right to do so, the liberties of Americans in their free individual pursuit of life and their happiness: the gamble the possible failure of their “dreams”

No neither villain nor fool, but both villain and fool. A PERFECT icon for the “Democratic Party” and its members in the last half century.
To add insult to injury, Obama has been dubbed by the drumbeating and trumpet blowing Media and others as “The Messiah”. You could not make it up.

His fascination with trains goes beyond unions. Trains require real estate which will be owned by those who are connected. Here, in the Peoples Republic of N.J.,”investors”buy worthless real estate and flip it to the Department of Environmental Protection at a huge profit for use as Green Acres.

I have been puzzling over the train obsession as well. I think it has to do with his romantic collectivist communitarian vision of the world. Somehow he imagines that we will not need cars which are isolated and individual. Trains are group transportation and run along lines dictated by collective decision making.

I think when Obama looks out at the crowd he does not see a group of individuals standing together. He sees the crowd as an organism in itself, one which can be swayed and manipulated by the only individual in the room, himself. Seems natural that trains would be the mode of transportation most ideal to his way of thinking.

Or maybe a train is just a train.

Can’t resist one quote:

But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
“The passengers will please refrain:
This train got the disappea rin’ railroad blues

Good night America, how are you?
Say don’t you know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.